Subconscious
by NephilimEQ
Summary: Sherlock and Mary have a conversation just two days before the wedding. Sherlock suspects something isn't right about Mary. Mary doesn't deny it. Contains SPOILERS for S2 and S3.


**A.N. - This is an idea that I had kicking around in my head for a while. What if Sherlock had suspected something about Mary just a couple of days before the wedding, when she was getting nervous, and he and Mary had had a talk about it? I would think that Sherlock would have tried to delete the memory in order to keep from ruining John's happiness, and then when he got shot by Mary, all of the memories would have flooded back and he would have immediately done what needed to be done in order to move on. The whole scene where Mary confessed seemed like something that Sherlock would have planned a long time before. Just a theory. Loved writing it!**

**Subconscious**

Mary is pacing in front of me, not looking me in the eye, and I can't help but silently catalogue in the way that John detests, but I simply can't help it. She has been an enigma to me since I met her. When I first met her, she was simple and straightforward, but now that I know that she is hiding something from her future husband, I deduce. I deduce with all the effort of my mind, which is considerable, and take in every nuance and detail of how she is acting.

Pacing; nervous habit developed as a way of stalling for time, uncomfortable in social situations. Her nails are bitten down, but a faint white residue on the fading red polish tells me that she has recently been cooking, for John, no doubt, and from the way she habitually pulls back from biting them tells me it is something that is not pleasant to the taste; onions, most likely. She detests them; I know, because John has a liking for them. She is wearing washed out pastels; a faded yellow-flowered blouse tucked into blue slacks, pink shoes. Even her purse is looking like it has seen better days during the seventies; odd, considering how she emulates a woman from the forties in so many ways. Her mannerisms; demure, but subtly controlling. She doesn't know that I notice how she effortlessly directs John's actions whenever they are together, but I notice all of the signs. The touch of her hand to his arm to draw his attention, the tapping of a fingernail on the table or his shoulder, the press of her knee against his before he leaves a table, subconsciously training him in ways that would go completely unnoticed by anyone else…except for me. She is a manipulator in every sense of the word. Unlike myself, she has no control over her impulse to control, and it comes out even when she doesn't want it to.

They are opposites in all of the wrong ways. How she pulled him into her web baffles me. Of course, as soon as I think that, I consider that I was gone, believed to have committed suicide, leaving him, unlike me, emotional and vulnerable. Of course. How have I not seen it before?

Several of her odd habits fall into place. The defensive posture; not defensive, cautionary. Two _entirely_ different things, but very similar in separate contexts. The pacing; not stalling for time; no, she is gathering her thoughts to say the right words to not bring me to my biting and scathing worst. She knows that no matter how many times I may verbally support John and hers upcoming nuptials, I will never be happy about it and always carry resentment around me like my long coat in their presence, no matter how long it may last. Oh, yes, I am aware that this marriage is not going to last, but I can wait, even if it takes years for John to realize that the woman he is marrying is not who she says she is.

She lies too effortlessly, it was almost impossible for me to notice. It is second nature to her; all of it, the lying, the controlling. She can't help herself. She _is_ in love with John, of that I am certain, because I know exactly what she sees in him. It's exactly what I see in him: his fierce loyalty, his stubbornness to see the best in people, his blindness to faults that are lying right in front of him. In ways, he is like a child in the way that he sees the people around him, not realizing just how heartless I can truly be, even when I do nothing to hide the fact that I have no tact and don't care whether or not I am hurting someone, he continues to doggedly persist in his optimism, that everyone can be good, even someone like me. Or someone like Mary.

I can see, now, how much this woman in front of me is like me, and, as I remember that John is going to be marrying her, I feel a strange surge of emotion in my chest; it is like anger, but instead of enraging me, causing me to surge to my feet, it seems to have the opposite effect, as though my lungs were collapsing under the weight of it, and I tear my eyes away from the woman in front of me, somehow knowing that she is the cause of this emotion, and it maddens me that I don't know why. I can't bear to look back at her, so I tuck my legs underneath me and wrap my robe tighter around my body, feeling an odd psychological need to turn my body into a smaller target. I don't know what it is about her that causes me to do this…but I know that instinct is never wrong.

I will never tell John about my misgivings about his future wife, but when the time comes when he turns to me, with all of those questions in swimming in his eyes, wondering _why_ it didn't last with her…I will _still_ not say the words that come too easily with all of the other victims of this kind of happily forced charade. I will not tell him that I knew from the beginning, I will not tell him that I had suspected of her duplicity even as she came to me and asked me to help her with picking out his wedding gift; that, from the way that she looked a bit too firmly in my eyes and tried to show her approval of me just a bit too strongly, that I knew that she was hiding something.

It bothers me that I don't know what it is. But the itch of suspicion runs just under my skin, lingering every time she is near; or even when John speaks of her. I can see that she _honestly_ loves John…and that is what makes me the most furious. That it is easy for her to be so honest and yet hold the rest of herself in a shroud of darkness, as though having two faces is something that is all too second nature for her. It only spells future heartbreak for John.

My mind starts to wander once more, but then Mary stops pacing and pivots to face me.

"Sherlock."

I close my eyes and then steeple my fingers. I breathe in. I open my eyes.

She stares at me a moment longer than strictly necessary and then says, "We both know that you know something. We both know that _I_ know what it is, and you don't. You don't resent the fact that I'm not telling you, you resent the fact that I am not telling _John_, and I am not angry at you for that resentment. In fact…I admire you for it. It means you have John's best interests in mind more than I do. You want to protect him."

I open my mouth to respond, but she cuts me off.

"No, you do. You would say it's because you don't like it when your assets are in danger of being emotionally compromised, or something of that nature, and everyone who only _thinks_ that they know you, would completely believe you. But remember, Sherlock. I'm not John."

I remember our conversation only twelve days earlier, the day that she insisted that I take John on a case. When I had shown her the two types of napkins, she had seen straight through me, had said those same words, "I'm not John," and I had given in like a spineless jellyfish. Of course she isn't John. I know that. She is too much like me to ever be John…and, again, I feel that deep compression in my chest that I can't explain.

Finally, I say, "No. You're not."

She nods.

"Thank you for seeing that. Now, the problem is that you don't trust me because of this resentment. I want to address that issue." She pauses, as though waiting for me to protest, but when I merely arch in eyebrow in a silent request for her to continue, she does. "The fact of the matter is, I love John. It's as simple as that. I can swear to you that is not a lie and that I will do everything in my power to protect him, even if it means giving him up to you in order to do that."

At this, I drop my hands and give her a long look, sizing her up, wondering what kind of subterfuge she is trying to play out; trying desperately to see the strings that she is attempting to pull on my own emotional marionette…and I finally catch a glimpse of shining truth, blinding in its intensity.

"By marrying him you've unintentionally put him in the line of fire. Something or…some_one_ from your past, no doubt?"

Her face gives away nothing, and my fingers resume their previous position. There is a long stretch of silence between us and I know that she is using it to try and place her words so as not to give anything away. Little does she know that her face is speaking volumes. I am right. I _know_ it. But, I also know that not a word of this can be breathed in John's direction, and that I will have to take my place in the subterfuge that she has put together to keep him safe. I am now an unwitting accomplice in keeping John safe, and even though I know that I would keep him safe even without her influence, just the knowledge that by deducing her I've put myself into this mess, makes me sick to my stomach.

I don't like deceiving John, no matter how it appears to others, or him, that I seem to take perverse pleasure from it. I tell lies that are of no consequence, that are immaterial, or I withhold information until it is necessary…my suicide, for example. I hated doing it to him, but it had been necessary to keep him safe. If he had suspected, just the smallest bit, that I was alive, he would have found me, Mycroft, queen, and country be damned. And that could not happen.

Mary looks at me, and I see the silent dare in her gaze.

I stare right back.

The silence stretches, neither of us giving pardon…until I relent.

"Fine. But know this," I say, rising out of my chair, getting closer to her until I am leaning over her, my mouth next to her ear as I bow my head next to hers. "I will lie only as long as I _don't_ know the truth. Should I discover who you are or what you _were_…all bets are off. I will tell him, do not doubt that for a _second._ He is a man far better than either of us and does not deserve to be lied to. John Watson deserves _far_ better than you, and so long as you lie to him I will _always_ see you as a threat, make _no_ mistake…"

I let my threat linger and am slightly impressed when she lifts her head to look me in the eye.

"Then make no mistake, Sherlock Holmes, when I say that he will blame you just as much as me when it _does _happen. You will be just as culpable as I am."

I smirk.

"I know. But, unlike you, I can live with him hating me."

I don't have to say anything else, because she can hear the words without me needing to say them. _I can live with him hating me because I know that he will come back to me in the end and forgive me. And even if he doesn't, I know that he will still be the only person that I call a friend, and that I will _always _be his best friend…because he's John Watson. And I'm Sherlock Holmes._

Her glare softens and she pulls away, out of our silent stare-down, and heads towards the door, slipping her purse back over the crook of her arm…and then stops at the door. I see the scuffs on her shoes and know that they're new shoes and that she's recently been in Piccadilly Square from the distinctive stone dust that is only found in that area of London. The faint red mark on the back of her blue slacks says that she's been shopping at Harrods; they just recently painted the benches outside.

She turns her head back towards me, even as I move to walk towards the kitchen, and I see a pitying look on her face.

I stop.

"You know, I always thought you didn't have emotions…but now I can see that they're as plain as day."

Enigmatic. Confusing. What is she saying? The corner of her mouth turns up in the semblance of a smile, but I see after careful examination that it is a smirk. Why is she smirking? What is she talking about? I don't show emotions; I barely even register them in my own head.

Mary then shakes her head and says, "Don't worry, Sherlock. He's always been yours. He always will be yours. And you will always be his. Even if neither of you will ever admit it."

And with that last enigmatic statement, she disappears through the door, leaving me in a mentally disheveled state. What did any of that mean? What does she mean by the words _yours_ and _his_? People don't own each other, of that I am certain, so what in God's name could she be referring to? Forgetting my experiment in the kitchen, I step over John's chair and head to my own, pulling my robe around me like a blanket, settling down sideways in my chair, reaching absently for my violin.

As my fingers play along the tightly stretched strings, plucking out random notes, I think about what she said.

After a minute or two, I give up and delete the information from my mind palace as I walk back to the kitchen.

Yours. His. The whole conversation.

Not relevant.

* * *

It isn't until I see her face as she shoots me that the information comes flooding back to me in a violent stream of memories. I gasp as I fall to my back, and soon find myself in my mind palace…and the memories of our conversation that say words like _liar_, and _mine, yours…_and _always_. Never deleted, just filed deeply in the recesses of my mind.

Now I know that I have the information to save John, I need to tell him.

And that is what brings me back to him.

I am his.

Even if he is never mine.

So long as he's never hers.

I am his.

* * *

**THE END**


End file.
